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Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

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481–490 of 814 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#482
post #45

My company is transitioning to Teams and I find it frustrating. So much so that I collect my complaints in a confluence page. I could be wrong on some of these, so happy to be corrected! No links You can’t link to conversations. This means if you want to add context to a Jira ticket or in a code comment, you can’t easily do so. Inconsistent UI The UI between a Teams channel and a chat with multiple people is not cons…

> No links > You can’t link to conversations. This means if you want to add context to a Jira ticket or in a code comment, you can’t easily do so.

You can, at least technically, if you know the message IDs (search for Teams deep links).. Not sure why they don't expose this on the UI though.. Shameless plug: If you are looking for linking conversation to Jira, try our app: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1220851/microsoft-tea...

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#483
This thread is incredibly negative, this is a suprise because our entire company relies on teams for remote working and it works pretty damned well.

Interestingly teams usage seems to be still rising post-pandemic, something competitors are not seeing (and competitors include its own Skype product), teams even managed to surpass Slack in third part plugin support. So i'm not really buying this thread as repsentative, but it more function of the extremly high usage whcih is suprising on a forum which is heavily Mac/Linux oriented.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#485
post #45

My company is transitioning to Teams and I find it frustrating. So much so that I collect my complaints in a confluence page. I could be wrong on some of these, so happy to be corrected! No links You can’t link to conversations. This means if you want to add context to a Jira ticket or in a code comment, you can’t easily do so. Inconsistent UI The UI between a Teams channel and a chat with multiple people is not cons…

>- don’t support ``` for code blocks. Channel chats do. Why? I have no clue. In general, Teams doesn't have real markdown support. It can detect some markdown-ish syntax and replace it with its WYSIWYG stuff, but that's not the same thing (it doesn't always replace it, it doesn't handle messages sent with markdown syntax properly, it doesn't follow standard markdown syntax, and it doesn't let you edit the markdown ma…

> - Teams for desktop likes to randomly decide your microphone isn't working, and turn your audio off. The microphone works fine in literally any other program.

If you're using a Mac this might be a MacOS feature/bug which you might already worked around it in another applications https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253371535

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#486
post #463

My 2 cents of venting on this sorry excuse of software - Backtick formatting in a chat post only works after typing the closing backtick, deleting it, re-typing it - Text copied from a conversation is polluted with names and time stamps. "I really want this feature" said nobody ever - The mute/unmute button is hard to find, I don't think I've ever attended a Teams meeting without someone struggling with this. Teams s…

My favorite one is that when someone "likes" or use whatever "emotion" on your message, even if you are currently taking to the person, you need to click "activity" page in order to clear that notification and then come back

It is very annoying. Thankfully, there is an option to turn these notifications off.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#487
post #483

This thread is incredibly negative, this is a suprise because our entire company relies on teams for remote working and it works pretty damned well. Interestingly teams usage seems to be still rising post-pandemic, something competitors are not seeing (and competitors include its own Skype product), teams even managed to surpass Slack in third part plugin support. So i'm not really buying this thread as repsentative,…

Teams usage is rising because it's free and bundled with other corporate MS office offerings like SharePoint. That's my hunch anyway, I really don't think anyone who's used Slack and Teams equally (yes, on a mac in this case) would pick Teams on its merit.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#488
post #449
post #402

Teams doesn't have to be good to succeed. It just has to exist. It's not even very important how good it is. Given it exists, IT will make everyone use it on Microsoft's behalf regardless of how bad it is. Or another way to look at it is that the real customers for Teams are IT departments. It makes their lives easier because they don't have to do anything and it meets all the compliance requirements they are suppose…

This. Can we use anti-trust laws to break it up?

Do calculator software devs ask for anti trust laws when someone includes a calculator in their software suite?

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#489

Long ago Microsoft had MSN Messenger, which was one of the leading messaging apps. It worked well, and many 'normal' users were using it. Then Microsoft dissolved the team behind it and screwed up the product so bad with bloatware and ads that everyone moved to WhatsApp (except in the US where people went back to texting). Then Microsoft came out with Communicator, renamed it to Lync, which was a corporate messenger/…

Microsoft also had MindAlign, which was an excellent no-nonsense group chat originally spun off from UBS (!) and widely liked by its users at various big firms, mostly banks- basically it was like IRC with management tools and record keeping added to meet compliance and audit needs. Bits got folded into Lync/ Skype for Business but those were never as good and certain customers are still using the original product.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#490

Long ago Microsoft had MSN Messenger, which was one of the leading messaging apps. It worked well, and many 'normal' users were using it. Then Microsoft dissolved the team behind it and screwed up the product so bad with bloatware and ads that everyone moved to WhatsApp (except in the US where people went back to texting). Then Microsoft came out with Communicator, renamed it to Lync, which was a corporate messenger/…

Skype for business is just a rebranded Lync it has nothing to do with the Skype for consumers.
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